One
of my geekiest hobbies is “map staring,” which is combined with Youtube daydreaming, guidebook reading,
and old travel / hiking magazine hording to inspire me to do all kinds of cool
stuff in the future. You could say that I’m a regular Rocky Dennis. At one
point in a tribute to him, I even had a map hanging on the wall, where I put pushpins of all of the
places that I wanted to go and did go. I even had them color-coded, if that tells
you how big of a geek I am with this stuff (something I developed in my later Air Force days when a former girlfriend and I traveled much of England, though I never even looked up where the base I was being stationed at was previous to arriving).
Generally, I avoid these
hobbies when I'm not traveling, in the same way I avoid my Scott E. Brown and Michael Kelsey books, as
they do more to promote the ideas that A) I live in the wrong part of the state
/ country / world, B) I don’t make enough money to travel as much as I want to,
and C) I don’t have enough time to travel like I should.
These
are not necessarily positive things, so I am contemplating how to rectify them.
One way to do this is to
get people to buy the books that I’ve already written and to write more. Some
of this is in the works already, so yeah, I’m covering those grounds to create
my Parkinson’s story to go with my ghost / archaeology / save the world /
action stories. Another way is to win the lottery, but I get the idea that math
is against me on that one, so instead, I have decided to pimp myself out to obtain
corporate sponsorship and products. For instance, I would proudly exclaim my
love of Black Diamond trekking poles, Kahtoola Microspikes, Camelbak backpacks
and reservoirs, Keen boots, Cabelas Polar Fleece long underwear, and Berks ring
bologna in return for more products or cash. I will gladly list product
information and even wear patches of each brand. The only line I won’t cross is
getting a tattoo on my body for a company, though if Southwest Airlines gave me
free flights for life, I’ll get their logo tattooed to my chest. I would do the
same thing for a supped-up green Jeep Wrangler XL. I’ve never driven one
before, but damn, I could tell you that I’d like it. All the same, I have
driven a Toyota Yaris, and I would emphatically state how nice that my Macho
Dude has been to me.
Thus,
any information you can give me on being a professional product shill, the kind
that makes Oprah’s favorite things and Wayne’s World seem tame in comparison, I
would gladly appreciate it.
Timeliness is very
important in this since last night my wife and I decided to fork over cash for
the first of the vacations this year, which will see us go to see my Air Force
friends in Jacksonville, Florida. As a result, I am in I can’t wait mode for
something else besides just the Christmas present 90 minute massage I have
scheduled for Friday night. We're already thinking swamp boat tour and going up to Waycross, Georgia, to see where my grandparents got married as well as to St. Simon Island.
Thus,
it would seem reasonable to state that I now have permission to break out the
atlas and road map, as well as the greenlight to look on Youtube to see the actual images of what places look like.
Additionally,
since we booked our hotel in Virginia Beach for the end of the school year, I
can look at that, but really, this is low priority for planning considering what
else we want to do. After all, a beach is a beach is a beach. The only real
differences are public, private, nature, polluted, or nude, and no, I won’t be
doing nude or polluted, be it with trash or jelly fish.
People may not be able to distinguish me from the jelly fish.
The first big summer
shindig is that in June, we also will be doing one getaway weekend to Coney
Island for the Mermaid Parade because, why not? They describe themselves as a
combination of “ancient mythology and honky-tonk rituals of the seaside,” so
yeah, I’m down for that on June 17th. Gotta love Long Island,
birthplace of Billy Joel and former stomping ground for Walt Whitman.
More importantly than
even a crazy parade like that, though, is that we started figuring out the “real
deal” 2-week summer vacation in August to fly into Denver to do Wyoming,
Montana, Idaho, Utah, South Dakota and Colorado. Thus, I’ve been watching
videos of Nine Mile Canyon in Utah to brush up on my petroglyph dreams, which
go with the already stabilized dreams of going to the Great Gallery in the
Horseshoe Canyon extension of Canyonlands National Park. On a positive note,
there are 4-wheel drive excursions for this, so I don’t have to worry about
mega drives into the canyons with a rental car or not having someone to help us
out if we have trouble finding things or get into trouble like we did in IceboxCanyon, which is outside Vegas, when my wife took out her ACL (with her zombie ligament, she's OK now, but her ordeal and strength getting out was amazing).
That’s just not good.
Now I’ve done some things
out there before, but I’m definitely not one to pass up on petroglyphs,
dinosaurs, mountains, waterfalls, archaeo-astronomy, Americana, science
fiction, and long drives into the western sunset, so if that’s you, too, feel
free to share your choices.
Our goals are definitely
Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, and the 2 places listed above. I want to see BigHorn Medicine Wheel and the wild horses at Pryor Mountain, which are very close
to one another. Additionally, we want to go to Hell’s Creek, Montana, to see
the dinosaur digs.
Feel free to share your
hiking investigation stories. I’d love to hear them to learn and be inspired by
them.
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